Kitsune's Scrolls

Kitsune's Scrolls ASIA'S NO. 1 BAKER CHANNEL “Mar,” he demanded hastily, “more marshed turnips, please.”,The infant class which was to be under the guidance of Mrs. Wopp for the day, consisted of seven small pupils. They were seated on a low bench in one corner of the church. Green denim curtains were hung in such a way that, after the preliminary devotional exercises, the little class could be screened from the adults and older pupils. A blackboard stood on the floor, and upon a table near by were many colored crayons. The infantile mind required such aids to the imagination.,“The work I am at now Howard, requires mostly a sense of humor. Just look at this and ask yourself how I manage to keep my face straight sometimes at school.” Howard took the paper handed to him and had hardly read a line before his risibility was tickled.,She emerged from the house her hair coiled on the top of her head and decorated with a strip of shining silver from an empty biscuit tin. Thus had she seen a circus lady dressed on one never-to-be-forgotten day. Around her small body was draped a yellow silk shawl of Mrs. Wopps. Her feet were encased in a pair of Ebenezer Wopp’s reddest socks, bound on by bright green ribbon ripped from her winter hat. From her fair hair floated a white aigret made of chicken feathers hastily wired together. Moses needed no aigret as a strand of red hair stood upright from the crown of his head.,“He didn’t come roun’ here, I kin tell you though,” joined in Mrs. Wopp, energetically. In speaking of Mr. Zelamba, her voice modulated harshly into a key of hyper-acidulated sharps. “I says to Miss Gordon, an’ she jined in with me, a piannerist may be well ’nough as an actor man, but when it comes to takin’ fer keeps, give me a real man.” After taking a deep breath she continued, “My, but he makes a heap of money an’ he loves it, too; but when he gits to be about forty, the lines in his fiz’ll be as tight as my clothes-rope arter a spell of rain.”，“This isn’t so bad,” he continued, as he led her into a sunny upper chamber that looked on the mountain in the rear. “And it’ll be all over in a day or so; you’ll see your father,—on the square you will, little kid. Do you think you’ll scream? You’d better not.” He put his hand under her chin to lift her face, and she was glad he wore gloves.，“He was a real little cat Moses, wasn’t he? And you—you must be Pharaoh’s son instead of daughter.” The child laughed and clapped her hands.，“My racer has only one eye anyways,” said Betty defiantly as she twined a piece of nasturtium vine round the noble brow of the victor.And Billy did not think of it as strange till Buzz’s grandmother called from behind the window curtain, “Delia, you surely won’t traipse through town with that crowd! How you will look!”

“We hev a homestead an’ pre-emption, Miss Gordon, but only work a hundred acres or thereabout. We run stock on the rest of it, aint that the how of it Lize?” Mr. Wopp looked to his help-meet for corroboration.,Was there to be another murder? Ought he to call? If he did wouldn’t they turn on him—kill him? No matter. Some one might be on the road and hear. And he could run pretty fast. Anyway he must risk it.,“Well, time is near up younguns; has any one a question to arsk?”,Before he emerged from the leafy path Billy heard well-known whining, and wondered why the dog didn’t come to meet him. The next instant he saw him straining against his bonds.,“O Billy,” his mother laughed, “you need not decide to-night. Besides, it was all Bess’s nonsense. I can’t quite imagine my heedless boy in a pulpit.”,The child was gifted in this most elemental of the arts, and her histrionic ability carried along the interest of her listeners even when the printed matter on the back of the paper interfered with the clearness of the picture. Her imagination bolstered up the defects of dry facts.,“Dear Billy,” it read; “Shifty seen the fight. He says it was something fierce. He says you looked like a mad bull. He was hiding behind the fence. He says he bet on me; but he was glad he didn’t bet with nobody, because you whipped. Shifty’s doing some of my written work—I’m telling him how, of course. And I’m studying right smart. Say, Bill, I don’t lay no grudge. My arm’s getting on fine.,His mood grew more thoughtful. He put the dishes away quietly, and neither spoke again till the work was finished. Then he went and kissed her on the cheek. “It’s good to have you all to myself, little mother; to be just chums once more.”,“Open window.”,In the hours of joy that followed, joy known only to boys and farms in conjunction, Billy,—and it was unusual for him,—more than once recalled his mother’s words; heeded them to the extent of bidding Harold a reluctant good-bye when the sun was still blazing high above the horizon. But when, on his way home, he came to the branching of the road his good resolution weakened. He looked back. The sun was surely more than an hour high. He would have time to go up the hill road to the “Ha’nt.” And, beside that, he wished to look at the river where its divided flow encircled a tiny, shrub-grown island.,“So they took up Joner an’ tossed him inter the sea.”,“Moses!” called husband and wife, simultaneously. Mrs. Wopp’s voice spanned an interval of about a dozen semi-tones, and as it always grew in volume in direct ratio to the emergency of the duty to be imposed, the last syllable of her son’s name fell on that wretched boy’s ear like a clap of thunder. Mr. Wopp’s accents remained on nearly all occasions at the same even degree of meekness. Nature had not given him the temperament to indulge in crescendos or double fortes..